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WARRENTON • A billboard along Interstate 70 encourages drivers to stop in Warrenton and stay awhile.
But with just a handful of shops left at the Warrenton Outlet Center, there are fewer reasons for St. Louisans to make the trek to this city, which is about 60 miles west of downtown.
The Gap Factory Outlet and Dress Barn have jumped ship, finding apparently sunnier pastures last year in a strip center in Wentzville. The Levi’s Outlet Store, G.H. Bass & Company, and the Famous Footwear Outlet shuttered their locations last month.
And the Nike Factory Store, one of the last major retailers left, is closing in April and moving to the Meadows at Lake Saint Louis.
Elsewhere around the country, many outlet malls continue to thrive and developers are rushing to build more of them. But Warrenton’s outlet center, operating under an increasingly outdated model, never managed to reach its full potential.
Now the beleaguered center will suffer an ignoble fate shared by other retail properties on the decline: the auction block.
The 200,000 square foot outlet center will be put up for sale in a three-day online auction starting Monday morning. The minimum starting bid is $375,000.
The listing at auction.com notes that the center was 35 percent occupied in November. But that was before some of the more recent departures.
The center first opened in 1993 during a boom in outlet mall building around the country. It once boasted many notable stores such as Mikasa, Nine West, and Jones New York — some names of which are still barely visible above vacant storefronts. At one time, it had upwards of 45 stores. Now only about 10 stores remain.
“Even a few years ago, it was still a vibrant center,” said Michelle Schlenther, Warrenton’s director of economic development. “People would come out and make a day trip out of it. The dad would go play a round of golf while the wife shopped.”
So what happened?
“It’s an older center,” said Linda Humphers, who tracks the outlet mall industry for the International Council of Shopping Centers as editor of Value Retail News. “It’s only 200,000 square feet and it’s probably a little too far out of town.”
Older outlet malls like Warrenton were built about 40 to 50 miles outside of cities because retailers objected to having discounted merchandise so close to their regular-price stores.
But that model has begun to change of late with newer outlet malls creeping closer and closer in. A good illustration of this is that there are two proposed outlet mall developments duking it out to come to Chesterfield within a stone’s throw from the Chesterfield Mall.
NOT A DESTINATION
Steve Etcher, executive director of the Boonslick Regional Planning Commission, said the Warrenton outlets never grew to be large enough to be a true shopping destination. A third phase for the center, which would have taken it more than 100 stores, never materialized.
“You had drive-by shopping, but not enough to sustain it,” he said. “It’s not a bad location — you’re right on 70, but it’s not necessarily destination. To me, Lake of the Ozarks is destination. But this ended up being more of an along-the-way thing.”
It didn’t help, he said, that ownership of the center changed hands several times. And then when the St. Louis Mills opened in 2003, offering a mix of outlet and regular price stores, that took some wind out of Warrenton, too.
Schlenther also traced some of the decline to several years ago went a number of stores went bankrupt or underwent massive restructuring such as KB Toys, Liz Claiborne, and Big Dog Sportswear.
“So a lot of what closed there closed not only in Missouri, but across the nation,” she said. “And it just happened that we had a lot of those in one facility.”
Things got only worse when the property fell into receivership a couple years ago, Schlenther said. At that time, the owner was Ariel Preferred Retail Group, which had a portfolio of about seven outlet malls.
“Stores just don’t want to come in and put an investment in because they don’t know when it’s bought what the new owners are going to do,” she said.
Texas-based Woodmont Co. is the receiver that’s managing the property. An on-site outlet manager referred questions to Fred Meno, a Woodmont executive. Meno did not return requests for comment.
Despite the troubles at Warrenton, Humphers said the prospects for an outlet mall in Chesterfield is a rosier proposition because the developers behind both projects are large, reputable mall developers.
In November, Simon Property Group, the owner of the St. Louis Mills, announced it was joining forces with Woodmont and EWB Development on that proposed outlet project to be called St Louis Premium Outlets. The project previously went by the name Spirit of St. Louis Outlets.
The other proposed outlet center — Chesterfield Outlets — is being spearheaded by Taubman Centers. The city of Chesterfield has approved its zoning request. And its plans for a 472,000-square foot upscale outlet center will go before the city’s architectural review board next week.
Aimee Nassif, the city’s planning and development director, said she’s expecting to receive the section plans from the other project any day now.
“They are literally kind of racing to the finish line,” she said. “It will be very interesting.”
OTHER USES
But Donna Boehringer hasn’t given up on the Warrenton outlets yet. She has operated her Corner Quilt Fabrics store in the center for about seven years after moving there from another location in town.
The move was good for business. A billboard she has along the interstate has also helped. She estimated about 60 percent of her customers are from out of town.
“Quilters seem to have this sixth sense of quilt shops,” she said. “If there’s one around, they will stop by.”
Boehringer did have her worst year in sales last year, but she attributed that more to the economy than to less traffic at the center. Now she’s in the process of renegotiating her lease.
“My plans are to stay right here,” he said. “I’m trying to be optimistic because I’d like to see something else come in. But we’ll see.”
Jan Olearnick, executive director of the Warrenton Area Chamber of Commerce, thinks the property holds promise for some sort of mixed-use project. An education center, a health facility, and a technology incubator are some of the ideas that have been thrown around.
“It would take a forward-thinking person to try and revive it, but we’re ready,” she said. “Warrenton is definitely a good location for any industry because of our proximity to I-70 and to the railroad — and even to the river.”
On top of that, the city recently got federal approval to build a new interchange just west of the outlet center, making for easier access to the site. But the project’s funding source has not yet been determined.
In the meantime, other enterprises have been popping up in the region — though they are not necessarily retail.
A billboard next to the entrance to the outlet center advertises one of them a bit further west: zip line tours.